


Transformative

by juniper_and_lamplight



Series: Close Reading [2]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Books, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/F, Fanfiction, Feelings of Inadequacy, Gen, Injury recovery (referenced), Intimacy, Never apologize for your reading tastes, Reading, Substance abuse recovery (referenced), Veering dangerously close to metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-09-28 22:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniper_and_lamplight/pseuds/juniper_and_lamplight
Summary: “But it’s like, you’re over there, reading some long-asstome, and I’m over here, imagining characters from my favorite TV show getting it on.”





	Transformative

_ **Now** _

Despite what some people may think, Tina Tevetino is not atotal dumbass.

She’s well aware of how she appears to the casual observer: _friendly, chill, but not so quick on the uptake. Too many brain cells destroyed by too many substances. Poor old Wacky T. _She knows their opinion of her, and she knows it’s bullshit. 

Sure, she doesn’t have a college degree or a high IQ, and some days it really does feel like she’s barely got two brain cells to rub together. But she can take care of herself, and that’s got to count for something. She’s survived this long, against all odds and expectations, and even though she isn’t typical sheriff’s deputy material, she’s savvy enough to keep the people of Bergsberg safe. (Well, mostly. She can hardly be blamed for not anticipating a magical murder spree.) She’s always been better at understanding people than at understanding words or numbers or concepts, anyway. Hobbs trusts her, and so she trusts herself. Hobbs _never _treats her like she’s stupid.

Not only does Hobbs trust her, _Farah _trusts her. Farah Black, the smartest, most hypercompetent person Tina’s ever met, trusts her and believes in her and _chooses _to be with her. That’s..._significant_. Tina reminds herself of this whenever she starts feeling like her neighbors’ judgey whispers might be right; whenever she gets the wrong end of a stick; whenever she looks at the books lining Farah’s tastefully modern living room and remembers that she came within two points of failing the reading section of the GED. Farah doesn’t treat her like an idiot, so there’s no reason to feel like one. Not even when they’re side by side on the couch, Farah blazing through a 640-page hardcover while Tina scrolls slowly through 2000 words of—

“Tina?”

Tina startles, and hastily thumbs off her phone screen. 

Farah’s expression is soft but intrigued—ever the investigator, even off the clock. “I thought reading wasn’t your thing?”

Tina shrugs. “It’s not. Too much sustained attention-paying, you can keep it.”

“But…” The investigation face intensifies. “That looked like words on your phone just now. Fiction words, with characters and dialogue and everything.”

So much for stealth. “Yeah,” she admits, “but that’s not like _reading _reading.”

“What is it, then?” Farah’s not letting it go, because _Farah_. 

“It’s just fanfic.”

* * *

_ **Then** _

They’d tested her when she was a kid, but the results only made her parents more frustrated. Tina was perfectly _capable_ of reading, she just did it slowly. And resentfully, because reading was _boring_, no matter what kind of books well-meaning adults handed to her. Chapter books were annoying. Comics were worse than chapter books, because they meant she had to keep track of words _and _pictures. Books on tape put her to sleep. And poetry was just song lyrics without music, and without the music what was the point? She wished they’d test her on listening to music—she’d score off the charts. 

She floundered through elementary and middle school, doing the bare minimum to pass each grade and coasting on charm whenever possible. It worked well enough until 11th grade, when her brother died and Tina found herself fresh out of fucks to give for school, or for anything that didn’t offer some form of chemical relief. She tried to fake normalcy, because she didn’t want to break her parents’ hearts again after what they’d already been through, but her chronic lateness, frequent intoxication, and inability to turn in homework meant that she had some of the lowest grades and highest detention rates of any student at Adams High.

One day, there was a new teacher supervising detention—new, young, and painfully overeager. He’d probably be eaten alive before the end of the semester. Tina felt his eyes on her as she picked up and put down _The Scarlet Letter_ five times in a row. (She kept hoping it would make more sense when she picked it up again. It didn’t.) When detention let out for the day, the teacher stopped her and handed her a paperback. “I can tell that Hawthorne isn’t exactly your favorite,” he said, with an attempt at a buddy-buddy smile. “This might be...more your speed. If you like it, maybe I can talk your English Lit teacher into giving you some extra credit.”

She didn’t like the smug tone in his voice, or the way he looked at her like he knew something about her. But no teacher had ever stuck their neck out for her before, and she was dangerously close to failing English. Warily, she took the book, shoving it into her bag before she could change her mind.

The next day, as soon as detention let out, she dropped the book on his desk and demanded, “What kind of bullshit is this?”

This was evidently not the response the teacher had anticipated. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but Tina didn’t give him a chance.

“Look, I get that you probably know my reputation, and like, okay. Fair. A drug-fuelled road trip DOES sound pretty awesome to me, but this—” she pointed at the book “—is a mess. I kept skipping around, trying to find a part that I could actually follow, but nope! I might be a dumbass burnout kid from Nowhere, Montana, but even_ I _could write better sentences than this Bivouac guy.”

“Kerouac,” the teacher corrected, automatically.

“Whatever.” Tina shrugged. “I see enough drunk asshole dudes in my real life, I’m not gonna spend my time reading about them. I think I have testosterone poisoning just from touching that thing. So thanks, but I’ll take the F in English.” She hefted her backpack and walked out without another word.

The teacher never reached out to her again, and while she didn’t flunk English, it was only because she dropped out of school a month later. 

* * *

_ **Now** _

Farah is still looking at her like they’re not speaking the same language. “Okay, so...I’ve never read it myself, but fanfiction is still made up of words, right? Words you have to read? You can’t just absorb it through osmosis, anything.”

Tina can’t remember what osmosis means, and she’s starting to feel sweaty under Farah’s scrutiny. “I mean, yeah, I guess? But it’s like—you’re over there, reading some long-ass, _tome _by…” Tina peers at Farah’s book, “...Marlon James, and I’m over here imagining characters from my favorite TV show getting it on.”

“You’re not just imagining it, though, you’re _reading _about it! In words.” Farah shakes her head. “You talk about the show all the time, but you never even mentioned _this_. I can’t believe you were all ‘reading sucks, pooh pooh,’ but we’ve been reading together this whole time!”

“What—? Okay, first of all, _nobody _says ‘pooh pooh.’ And second, it’s not like I was _always _reading fic every time we crashed out. Sometimes I was playing games, or watching Instagram stories, or reposting memes, or—”

But Farah’s enthusiasm is going full throttle now. There will be no stopping her. “Have you always been into fanfiction? Or is it just this one show? Do you have, I don’t know, favorites? How do you find the ones you want to read? Do you—”

Tina holds up her hands in surrender. “Whoa, hey, let’s slow down this interrogation.”

Farah presses her lips together and inhales through her nose. “Sorry. Okay. But...it’s not like you to hold back about...well, anything. You’ve seriously been into fanfiction the whole time we’ve known each together and you never thought to tell me?”

“It’s not like I was keeping it a secret! It’s just a _thing _I sometimes do. I don’t really talk about with anyone. And I didn’t really get into it for real until this past year, after we got out of the hospital. Before that, I just I kinda...dabbled.”

“Dabbled?” Farah pulls her legs up onto the couch, clearly settling in to the discussion. Might as well get it all out. 

“Yeah, so. You know I was all about music in the late ‘90s and early aughties.” 

“Yeah….”

“And you remember what the internet was like then—whatever you were into, there were forums and chat rooms and shit. Places where you could yell about whatever made you wanna yell. And sometimes, on band forums, people would write these little short things about their favorite bands. It was nothing like the kind of fic I like now, but it was a start, you know? And—what’s up with your face?”

“I’m sorry.“ Farah _looks _worried, but the way she ducks her head is almost sheepish. “I know it’s petty, but…you didn’t read stories about _Todd’s_ band, did you?”

“Pfffft! That’s what you’re worried about? Yeah, that’s a nope.” Tina shakes her head. “Don’t get me wrong—we all thought everyone in Mexican Funeral was stupid hot, and the photos on their MySpace page were thirst traps before that was even a thing, and _yeah_, a lot of fans might have _imagined _banging them—” 

“This is getting less and less reassuring.” 

“—but they were very scene-specific. Nowhere near big enough for RPF.” 

Farah exhales, relieved. And maybe there _is _a merciful god, because she doesn’t ask what RPF is. Instead she says, “So that was then. What do you read _now_?”

Tina’s officially reached her “fuck it, why not?” threshold. “Gimme your tablet. It’ll be easier to show you.”

* * *

_ **Then** _

It wasn’t the sort of thing she would have watched before, back in the days when she didn’t know that magic was both real and terrifying. But now, it was oddly reassuring to watch a show about a town beset by revenants. It made what had happened to her, to Bergsberg, look tame in comparison. And it’s not like she had much else to do while she sat on her ass, waiting for her injuries to heal so that she could be cleared for duty again. Hobbs came over every day, or she limped over to his place, and they did their best to keep each other sane, but eventually they had to part company, leaving Tina alone in her house, exhausted and bored and desperate for any distraction that would stop her from agonizing about how much she missed Farah, and how much she itched to take the edge off with something more potent than prescription-strength ibuprofen. Hobbs had connected her with an NA group in Great Falls, and while she still had qualms about calling herself an addict, she didn’t want to squander this moment, this chance to let her recovery be more than physical. This was the most sober she’d been since...ever, probably. Moderation was tedious, but if it meant that she’d live long enough to see the next completely bananas adventure, she’d manage it. She remembered the glow she’d felt when Farah told her she did good, when Hobbs called her a good cop—_that _was a high she was willing to chase.

And so she turned to one of the few substances that was socially acceptable to binge: television. When the show popped up in her Netflix recommendations, she clicked out of curiosity...and only resurfaced after she’d watched every available episode. Twice. Somewhere during the second viewing, her interest in the red-headed deputy and her cute but messed-up girlfriend bloomed into full-on fixation, and Tina did what any bored, obsessed, couchbound person would do: she googled. 

If she’d thought that binging the show was a rush, it was nothing compared to the fanfiction.

She didn’t think of it as reading, because it didn’t feel like reading, at least not any of the reading she’d ever had to do. With fanfic, she didn’t have to start from scratch, sussing out character motivations and symbolism and shit. She could just be immersed in the story, dizzy with the infinite possibility of it, and with the sheer relief of watching the same two women fall in love, get it on, and survive over and over again. 

As she waited out the final weeks of her medical leave, she worked her way through every fic in the WayHaught tag. She started checking for updates every few days until it became a habit, and since it was one of the most benign habits she’d ever picked up, she didn’t try to shake it, not even after she was back on duty and immersed in a dizzying romance of her own.

* * *

_ **Now** _

Second-guessing yourself is the _worst_, and Tina makes a point of never doing it, at least not in the moment. Regrets after the fact, however, are a different story. She hopes she won’t regret this. But Farah had been so curious, and now, as Tina watches her scroll through the “Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught” tag on AO3, her eyes tracking across the screen at light speed, Tina wonders, for the millionth time, what it’s like to have a brain that moves so _fast_. Then Farah’s eyes stop tracking, and she squints. “What are ‘Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics’?” 

The regrets come barrelling in ahead of schedule. 

Shocking even herself with her quick reflexes, Tina stops Farah from tapping on the tag. “Nopenopenope! You do NOT want to start there. Just...trust me.” She gently tries to pry the tablet from Farah’s hands. “How about we just _close _that tab?” She scrunches her nose in that way that Farah can’t resist...only it seems that Tina’s nose-scrunch isn’t as adorable as it used to be, because Farah doesn’t let go. 

“Fine, but if I’m not allowed to browse, then you have to recommend something.”

Tina loosens her grip on the tablet. “I _have _to?”

“Fanfiction is your favorite...genre? Format? It’s your favorite thing to read. And you’ve read a lot of it, right?”

“I guess?”

“So you’re the genre expert. Tell me what’s good.”

Expert? That’s not a word anyone’s ever been used to describe Tina before now. But flattery isn’t enough to tamp down her skepticism. “Why do you want to know?” 

“So I can _read _it.” The _duh _is implied. 

Of course Farah wants to read Tina’s favorite fics, because Farah wants to read _everything_. And it’s not that Tina’s _embarrassed_, exactly—she’s never had much capacity for embarrassment, and what little she’d had evaporated somewhere around Step Four of getting sober—but there’s a gross curdled feeling in her gut that makes her hesitate. It shouldn’t be a big deal. Farah’s never judged her for any of the other private things Tina’s shared, not even when judgement would have completely and totally justified. And yet...what if she shows her favorite fic to Farah and Farah doesn’t like it? Thinks it’s dumb? Tina would never be able to re-read it without remembering. Without knowing that she’s just as unworthy as people think she is. Just because it _shouldn’t_ be a big deal doesn’t mean that it _isn’t_. And now her silent non-answer has gone on for so long that it’s become an answer in and of itself.

“Tina…” Now Farah’s the one who seems embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like…” She sighs, then leans in and brushes back one of Tina’s braids, tucking it behind her ear with deliberate care. “If you want this to be a private thing, I can leave it alone. It’s fine to have some things that are just for you. But...you showed me the archive, and you sound so _excited _when you talk about it? It’s a whole different side of you. And I want to know _all _your sides.”

The curdled feeling eases, melting into a completely different kind of mushiness, the kind that’s so sweet and undiluted italmost makes her _mad_. How _dare _Farah be smart, brave, hot, AND sincerely interested in her as a complete human person? How _dare _she treat Tina’s obsession with a romance between two TV characters as if it was every bit as valid as a novel covered in award stickers? It just isn’t _fair_. Helpless against such an onslaught, Tina plucks the tablet from Farah’s hands and scrolls through the list of fics until she finds the one she’s looking for it. “Okay,” she says, tapping the link, “this one is my favorite, but fair warning—it gets pret-ty darn explicit.”

Farah lets out a tiny, incredulous laugh. “Tina. Are you seriously warning me, a person with whom you’ve had a lot of actual sex, about sexual content in fiction?” 

“Hey, just because you like _doing _it doesn’t mean you want to read about it! I didn’t wanna assume. You know what they say, assuming makes an ass out of—”

Farah holds out her hand. “Please, I read romance novels. Bring on the smut.” 

Tina hands over the tablet. And for the next forty minutes, she pretends not to watch Farah read. She knows she’s making a bad job of it, but she doesn’t really care, because she’s greedy for every change of expression, every sudden intake of breath, every smile and every scowl. She can tell when Farah gets to the sexy part near the end because she bites her lip, shifts slightly in her seat, and then goes very still except for her eyes, which race across the screen. When she’s done reading, she looks up, utterly unsurprised to find Tina already looking back at her.

“Well, that was…” Farah seems to be choosing her words with care. “...extremely compelling.”

Tina can’t stop the grin that spreads across her face. “Yeah? You didn’t think it was…” She doesn’t actually _say _“amateur garbage written for subliterate nerds,” but instead tries to convey it by making a face, and Farah (who’s become adept at deciphering Tina’s faces) picks up on her meaning right away.

“Not at all! The writing was actually better than a lot of popular books I’ve read. But even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter.” Farah reaches out to squeeze Tina’s thigh. “Not if you love it.”

Tina places her own hand over Farah’s, letting her grin turn lascivious. Then she takes the tablet from Farah’s other hand, setting it safely aside mere seconds before Farah straddles her lap, eyes bright with intent. They’re done reading for today.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Any kudos or comments will be cherished, and feel free to find me on Tumblr to yell about DGHDA and the reading habits of fictional people.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Fun fact: Like Tina, yours truly almost failed a portion of the GED, though in my case it was math. 
> 
> Apologies to any Wynona Earp fans if I mischaracterized your show; I’ve only seen a few episodes, but WayHaught seemed like the right kind of ship for Tina. 
> 
> Also, I promise that I wrote Tina’s anti-Kerouac rant out of a very real sense that she would find the Beats disappointing, and I only later recalled the very similar scene from _Freaks and Geeks_, a show I watched when I myself was an angry, disaffected teen. So...let’s just call it an homage? 
> 
> Works and authors referenced:  
-_The Scarlet Letter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne  
-_On the Road_, Jack Kerouac  
-_Black Leopard, Red Wolf_, Marlon James  
- the Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught tag here on AO3


End file.
